Pirates Of The Nuclear Front

A Small Armageddon
by Mordecai Roshwald
p. 1962

Cold War-era satire, A Small Armageddon, was the second of only two fictional novels ever written by Mordecai Roshwald, whose first novel, Level 7, got me into the post-apocalyptic genre to begin with. A Small Armageddon explores similar themes of mutually assured destruction and the threat of the arms race, but unlike the former, it follows a much more irreverent path to get its point across.

A Small Armageddon does not follow heroes; its primary characters are actually the villains: rogue nuclear submarine captain Gerald Brown and religious fanatic, Peter Schumacher. Brown dominates the majority of the novel as we follow his descent into modern day piracy. Brown—an ambitious but deeply resentful man in command of the nuclear-armed submarine Polar Lion—is interesting because he is a character who may never have become the person he did were it not for various influences. If he didn’t carry with him the baggage of his adolescence, always second best to the ‘popular kids’ he resents, he may never have snapped and murdered his commanding officer. If he weren’t so determined to be liked, he may not have gotten the support he needed to support his mutiny. If he hadn’t listened to one dumb kid’s dreamy notions of adventuring, he may never have gotten the idea to resort to piracy. And most importantly, if he hadn’t felt one-upped by Schumacher, the whole affair might have turned out very differently.

Schumacher is also incited to act based on his personal impulses, his being religious in nature. Schumacher, an extremist and fundamentalist, sees Brown’s crusade and is inspired to start one of his own—but instead of requesting strippers and gold, he demands strict enforcement of his moral code, which ends up being more difficult to provide than the strippers and the gold. Both men are in considerable positions of power and no one suspects they are capable of extreme action until they are literally pointing a missile at the world. It’s not enough that Brown and Schumacher are inspired by personal impulses; they are then further inspired to target each other out of revenge. This whole bit of satire just goes to show how dangerous it is to put the nuclear threat in the hands of men. We are quick to incite to anger and far too easily guided by emotion or personal gain. To allow corruptible men access to such savage power as nuclear weaponry can, according to Roshwald, very likely lead to our own downfall.

I did not find A Small Armageddon to live up to its predecessor. Level 7 is the more impressive of the two, as its vague tones and dire conclusion give it a gut punch feel unrivaled here, where the only ones who suffer are the villains (and a couple unfortunate people caught in the crossfire). Still, A Small Armageddon is not without its merits and it still manages to get its point across: it does not matter if you have the best intentions or the worst intentions if the end result is the same.

Victory At Any Cost

Triumph
by Philip Wylie
p. 1963

Something about Triumph feels really familiar to me... and I don’t think it’s because I just happen to read a lot of Cold War era post-apocalyptic fiction. The basic plot of Philip Wylie’s Triumph is almost exactly that of Mordecai Roshwald’s Level 7, the book that initially sparked my interest in this very specific genre some years back, so the comparisons in this review are inescapable. Both novels feature protagonists sequestered in a secure, deep, underground base following worldwide nuclear holocaust and their struggle to survive in a world they destroyed in an instant.

Triumph’s chief protagonist is Dr. Ben Bernman, a scientist who happens to be spending a weekend at Sachem’s Watch, the estate of millionaire, Vance Farr, when the world’s arsenal of nuclear technology is unleashed. Luckily for Ben, Vance Farr is The Man Who Thought of Everything, so when the sirens go off, Farr and his friends and family retreat to his vast underground shelter, where anything they could possibly need to survive a long nuclear winter awaits. Not much of import happens in the two years they spend underground; despite a lot of attractive young people of various races congregating in limited space, a few extramarital attractions, and one character’s rampant alcoholism, nothing really dramatic takes place amongst the ranks of the survivors of Sachem’s Watch. People learn to cooperate pretty quickly and—with the exception of one moment of insanity near the end of their internment—jealousy and racism are miraculously not issues.

I found this novel a bit dry, especially in comparison to Level 7, which is strange when you consider that Triumph focused on fourteen civilian survivors (including a billionaire who built a miracle bomb shelter, his alcoholic wife, his Italian-Irish mistress, and a wunderkind Japanese technowhiz, among others) whereas Level 7 was a vague narrative focusing on military personnel who lacked even first names. I think this is because where Level 7 maintained an air of mystery by being so stingy with the details, Triumph tended to overload us with facts, particularly with dry interludes on the remaining American military and their vengeful attempts to bring down the ‘Russkies.' If Vance Farr is The Man Who Thought of Everything in regards to bunker life (he even thought of providing roller skates for entertainment!) then Philip Wylie is The Author Who Thought of Everything in regards to surviving nuclear holocaust. However, I thought the most engaging parts of Triumph were the sporadic diary entries of one survivor describing daily bunker life in her words, and not the 'scientific' or philosophical rambling of the men. I tended to zone out when Ben and Farr were talking tech.

Then there were the jarring segments where the violence of the surviving outside world were described in shocking detail that was atypical of the rest of the book. I feel these were done for shock value and added very little to the story.

naïve.

My initial feeling towards Triumph was dislike. When I read Level 7, I was impressed by its progressiveness. The language was vague and provided no indicators of whose point of view we were getting; it could be ‘us’ or ‘them’ and in the end, neither side mattered because everyone perished at their own folly. Triumph, on the other hand, was not so subtle in their ‘Us’ versus ‘Them’ attitude. The constant references to ‘Reds’ and ‘Russkies’ getting ‘what they deserved,’ the revenge-driven interludes with the military, and the obsession with being the ‘winners’ or the last men standing all left a bad taste in my mouth, as it seemed terribly naive.

However, I am willing to lend Wylie the benefit of the doubt and say that this opinion was presented solely as a contrast to the progressive peaceful stance taken by the survivors of Sachem’s Watch. Many times throughout the book, the characters discuss racial relations and how interesting it is that the survivors are so amalgamated—white, black, Japanese, Chinese, Jewish, Italian, rich, poor—it’s a real 'We Are the World' down there. The attitudes presented may seem dated by today’s politically correct standards, but at the time, they were progressive. Everyone gets along and race is rarely, if ever, a matter of contention, so it seems fitting that in the end the fortunate, well-meaning survivors of Farr’s estate—and not the men whose revenge drove them to the inevitable murder-suicide of the entire northern hemisphere—seem to be the only living things to escape the ruins of America unscathed.

 

The World is Over; Now What?

Alas, Babylon
by Pat Frank
p. 1959

Without really intending to, June sort of became ‘Apocalypse Month’ for me, as all three novels I read that month dealt heavily with the end of the world, and all in vastly different ways. But whereas Good Omens and The Devil’s Cat were worlds on the brink of apocalypse, thwarted at the last moment, Alas, Babylon is one of those postwar apocalyptic novels that explores what happens after the world has suffered a nuclear holocaust. The last one I read like this was Mordecai Roshwald’s Level 7, and any comparisons between the two are apt.

It’s an interesting thing, the mentality that existed in Cold War era fiction. Whereas post-apocalyptic fiction was nothing new, the threat of nuclear holocaust added a new dimension to the genre with the implication that—at least in this instance—humanity is directly responsible for its own downfall and have no one to blame but themselves for the bleak world they left for the future, if indeed there is even a future left.

Alas, Babylon centers on the day to day trials of Randy Bragg and his town of Fort Repose, Florida, in the direct aftermath of a nuclear exchange that devastated the United States to the point where it became a third world nation in a matter of minutes.

Randy was a largely directionless but amiable young man who only thrived in his postwar world because he was warned by his older brother, a military man who saw the incident coming in time to send his family to Randy for protection. Suddenly saddled with numerous responsibilities, Randy does what he can to protect those closest to him—his sister in law and their two young children (who are remarkably well composed, given the circumstances; perhaps a bit more composed than what is natural), Randy’s girlfriend and her father, the town doctor, a couple of elderly female neighbors. Randy also warns the black neighbors who worked for him prior to the nuclear exchange (referred to in the novel as ‘The Day’) and a relationship of mutual assistance forms, which is crucial to the town’s survival. There are moments when the way the black characters are depicted feels a bit uncomfortable, but I have to say that—given the time frame in which it was written (1959)—Pat Frank is relatively politically correct, all things considered. Randy is a forward-thinking and fair-minded man, and it helps spur him on in his newfound ability to lead, a role previously alien to him.

Another thing I was mostly impressed by was Pat Frank’s depiction of women. I have been saying for years now—ever since I got into early science fiction—that it was my goal to find a male author who wrote positive roles for women prior to the seventies. Thus far, Alas, Babylon is the closest I’ve come to meeting this goal. There are still times when Frank slips into cringe-worthy clichés—such as Randy’s sister-in-law, Helen, momentarily becoming obsessed with Randy as a replacement for her husband, and Randy’s later appraisal that women cannot be relied upon to think for themselves some times,

“The more he learned about women the more there was to learn except that he had learned this: they needed a man around.”

but prior to this incident, Helen Bragg was a remarkably outstanding pillar of control and support. Randy’s girlfriend is portrayed as independent and free-thinking. The elderly female neighbors are hardy and independent as well, and even Randy’s eleven-year-old niece has a moment of determined brilliance when she takes the initiative to provide for her new community, comptently, I might add. But it was the most jarring revelation—that, as a result of The Day, the only remaining official left to hold the office of President is a woman, and Fort Repose accepts this with little argument—that made me question whether Pat Frank was a pseudonym for Patricia. (It’s not, remarkably.)

One of the aspects of fifties and sixties science fiction that I have come to realize, regrettably, is that there are few characters with standout personalities. The same can be said here, as Alas, Babylon, was a very perfunctory story, without much zest in the characterization department. That said, I did like Frank’s style of writing, particularly when he ramped it up for the end of chapters. This was not a book I read in one sitting, but I was okay with that, because the way every chapter ended was so poised that it left me with something to think about for hours afterwards, until I had the opportunity to resume reading.

It’s fitting that I concluded my ‘Apocalypse Month’ with a book that actually went to the brink, with finality and solemnity. It felt like a good way to cap off my month of living on the verge of destruction, and I already can’t wait to see what the next one will be like.

Eleven Reasons to Take a Valium

Eleven Kinds of Loneliness
by Richard Yates
p. 1962 (Stories written between 1951 and 1961)

It was the title that snagged me; I had never heard of Richard Yates, though I realized later, I’d heard of at least one of his novels, if only because it had been made into a movie a few years back—Revolutionary Road (which famously reunited Titanic costars DiCaprio and Winslet in a much different setting). This collection of short stories, released one year after the aforementioned novel, is a simple yet introspective reflection on the mundane life of 1950s Americans, and in my subsequent research on Yates’ legacy, I’ve come to understand that it not only embodies the spirit of what is known as the “Age of Anxiety,” but that Yates is generally regarded as the type of author that authors love... and one who is criminally under-read.

I’ll talk about this Age of Anxiety thing first, as that is a concept that was unfamiliar to me, and it guides a lot of my views on Yates’ collection. The term comes from a W.H. Auden poem (and later the Leonard Bernstein symphony upon which it was based). From what I understand, it refers to an era from the 1940s on when American society was unsettled, tense, trying to find their footing but feeling displaced in an increasingly industrialized world.

Well, I suppose there were a lot of things to feel tense about in the 1950s. Fresh off of one war and finding ourselves in another, the implementation of nuclear technology and the subsequent Cold War atmosphere, McCarthyism and Red Scare, and the wave of technology designed to bring us closer but irrevocably driving us further apart.

Unlike my beloved pulp sci-fi novels, which capitalize on Cold War fear and technological advances to create tension and intrigue, Yates’ work focuses more on the domestic—the subtle ways in which these changes affect our every day lives. The recurring theme in these eleven stark tales is, of course, loneliness, but not so much of the literal kind as the alone-in-a-crowd kind. I found that often times the central figure to each story (and almost all of the stories were told from a perspective outside of the subject) was someone with ‘vision,’ someone who possesses unique if unpopular traits that Yates believed should be more widely appreciated. It is a retrospective on the American Dream—not on the bright, shining possibilities and Land of Opportunity dogma you always hear about—but on what comes after, when you realize that perhaps that American Dream was not all it was cracked up to be and you must now struggle to find your place in a changing world that doesn’t care about your dreams.

If that sounds depressing then I’m doing it right, because these were eleven ridiculously depressing tales with very little relief. Seriously, I couldn’t read more than one in a single sitting because I needed to take a break for something lighter.

What makes it so much worse is that reading about the Age of Anxiety—fear of constant war, of religious fundamentalism, of out of touch politicians running things, of degradation of society, of a crumbling environment, of technology isolating us even while it ‘unites’ us—you realize that all of these things are as alarmingly applicable to today’s society as they were then. Sure, some of the details have changed, but the loneliness prevails. I need only look at my friends and family struggling with unemployment and displacement after decades of hard work—or at myself even, 26 and working a job unsuited to my own ‘dreams’ and aspirations—and I realize that we’re still deeply embedded in our own version of the Age of Anxiety. Perhaps reading Yates’ eleven tales of lonely people in a lonely world is so very depressing because it hits all too close to home.

I can’t say that Richard Yates’ writing style resonated with me—the prose is spartan and not very poetic, and he relies a bit too heavily on the cliched Italian-American ‘New Yawkah’ dialect but in spite of this the characters are deeply drawn and for the first time since this project of mine began, I can say I’ve encountered the first example of a story written in the 1950s that presented women as complex characters, perhaps not quite equal to men, but nonetheless relatively positive in their representation. The pulp sci-fi authors who think they’re doing women a favor by including them in the action could have learned a lesson or two from Yates about giving them a soul and a voice, but sadly, as I’ve come to find out, Yates wasn’t appreciated in his own time. He never sold more than 12,000 copies of any of his first editions and wasn’t recognized until after his death. He’s still not widely recognized today, which is a shame, because while his writing is simplistic, his ideas are far from such.